Oh, you have glass doors, I didn't realise. Bloody good idea. Lots of extra natural light and a way to stumble out of the kitchen (possibly carrying a flaming pan...) when needed. I don't have that crucially located door in my place ( the previous owners bricked it up!) and I have to say I miss it.

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Very nice. Must have been a bitch to gracefully unite the countertop with that very sexy unfinished upright. And I do covet the wok burner.

The stone guy and I spent about an hour working on how to do it and ended up making a cardboard model for him to take away. At first he was going to cut the stone so the circle wasn't across the diameter to make the cut hit the corners of the bench better. Fortunately I remembered a little bit of geometry.

Putting the stone in almost cost a few people their fingers for that bit

Oh, you have glass doors, I didn't realise. Bloody good idea. Lots of extra natural light and a way to stumble out of the kitchen (possibly carrying a flaming pan...) when needed. I don't have that crucially located door in my place ( the previous owners bricked it up!) and I have to say I miss it.

Just windows actually. Done in brown aluminium, changing them was out of scope for this project even though I hate aluminium windows.

I think it did come up really well. Better than I expected. Knocking the walls out was well worth it.

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When I do the brewery I think the sticker price might actually be something I have to talk about first as I want hermetically sealed temperature and humidity controlled. I suspect that might be where I find the difference between earning a decent chunk of cash and actually being rich

Fear not. For a mere $AUD4200 you can have this puppy. Invented by kiwis.

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Anything you can glom a magnet to works for induction. In this case nothing is induction specific though.

Yeah I get that feeling this one is a little expensive. The builder has also pointed out that a PVC pipe would suffice rather than an aqueduct but I pointed out I can see it and I would rather see an aqueduct than a pvc pipe and in 50 years I will be happy I choose the thing that looks good. When I do the brewery I think the sticker price might actually be something I have to talk about first as I want hermetically sealed temperature and humidity controlled. I suspect that might be where I find the difference between earning a decent chunk of cash and actually being rich

The menu as it stands (I can't even blame this on drunkenness having been sober for two weeks now):

On entry each guest gets a medium size tagine with a vietnamese fresh spring roll and a few slices of rolled crab omelette in a tagine which is about 3cm deep and 10cm across. This is their dish for the night (less dishwashing). They also get a teeny weeny tagine maybe 1cm in depth and 3 across with a dipping sauce for the spring roll. Each set comes with a spoon and a poky thing.

Then I have mushrooms in tomato goop with bread. (mushrooms a la greque is what Stephanie calls it, basically mushrooms boiled in a bit of tomato with some thyme and fiddle faddle, easy to make the day before, nice at room temp). They can grab spoonfuls from the big old bowl and dump it in their relatively clean tagine. The bread is still a subject of discussion and we may have two different breads, I love the bakers delight olive pull apart or some nasty sourdough for wiping up the juices of this one. By this time they ought to have all ditched the lids to the tagines and so they can just dump the bread on the side of basically a flat dish which is not cardboard.

The idea being everyone arrives at different times, they get some spring roll dealy to shut them up then the mushrooms to haul the bastards into a vague semblance of order.

At that point usually everyone wanders off and talks bollocks. I sneakily grab my:

Fried rice (not fancy fancy, just fried because it keeps better at low heat, bit of veges and soy is all)

Chicken & Corn balls, these happen to go well with the same dipping sauce for the spring rolls.

Chicken drumsticks done in an african peanut sauce thing (I am sure it has a name but I accidentally came up with it trying to emulate a korean dish)

Pork Belly with sticky sauce

Load the lot into a variety of tagines I have and whack 'em out for general buffet silliness, slightly subdues silliness because the tagine is too small to do stupid overloading.

I think I have got it all down to stuff which I can do at least 6 hrs ahead of time. A few things haven't been tested (keeping individual spring rolls fresh with a bit of damp kitchen paper for example) and I will rpobably test this weekend.

With any luck the one kid that is coming and I can just grab a load of chicken and run downstairs and playstation our arses off while the grownups bitch about family issues and so on. I was actually thinking of doing a secret spicy wings for him and I. Screw this fancy stuff with tedious company, I want something to scarf while I beat the bejesus out of a 10 yr old at Tekken. If he doesn't like blue cheese garlicy dressing he can can talk to his mum

Brilliance! I do believe I've arrived at a similar conclusion. Less a formal dinner party and more a tapas feast. Everybody relaxes as they aren't sedentary. Less pressure on the chef as if this dish doesn't work then the next will. Remind me to ingratiate myself.

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Fear not. For a mere $AUD4200 you can have this puppy. Invented by kiwis.

That looks awesome. I have long wondered why that type of thing was not available. Brewing lends itself to mechanisation and automation. There is an element of art to it as well but few of us are going to claim to be master brewers.

Might have to get in touch with them find out if they are demo ing in Aus anywhere.

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That looks awesome. I have long wondered why that type of thing was not available. Brewing lends itself to mechanisation and automation. There is an element of art to it as well but few of us are going to claim to be master brewers.

Might have to get in touch with them find out if they are demo ing in Aus anywhere.